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The Caretaker (Halloween Horror Nights)
Dr. Albert Caine, also known as The Caretaker is an icon for Universal Studios' Halloween event called Halloween Horror Nights. He was the main icon, aka the Big Bad of its twelveth year in 2002, known as Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear. Carnage, Knightmare, the Treaks and Foons, and human/dinosaur hybrids from Jurassic Park were his henchmen that roamed the terrifying islands. The aforementioned haunted house spawned two sequels including ScreamHouse: Revisited at Halloween Horror Nights 13 and ScreamHouse: Resurrection at Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16. Originally, he was not going to be the icon for 2002's event. Instead, his daughter Cindy was intended to become the original icon for the event but was scrapped due to child abductions. He was portrayed by Hank Stone in the television advertisements. However, he was portrayed by Bryce Ward in everything else, and has had his own maze called ScreamHouse, the main haunted house for 2002's event. Background Once a well-respected surgeon, he became the caretaker of the Shady Oaks Cemetery in Willamette Valley. Caine later converted the Victorian-style mansion he and his family lived in into a mortuary/funeral parlor. For years during his career as a surgeon, Dr. Caine was intensely interested in the workings of the body and what happened to the patients he couldn't save, what happens to a person when they die. Caine and his family eventually used the deceased of the town as guinea pigs in unnatural and bizarre experiments. His demented "extended family", made up of blood relatives and deranged assistants, dug up the bodies of both the recent and not-so-recently dead and used them for either Caine's experiments, their elaborate "parties", or as house decoration. Caine performed these experiments in an attempt to discover the nature of the "soul". For fresh specimens, Caine would go into the nearby town to find homeless people, and, in what seemed like a charitable offer, invited them to his Mansion/funeral home until they got back on their feet. Instead of helping, though, he would perform horrifying surgeries on them, carving them open on the operating table while they were restrained and often fully conscious and without anesthetic. Caine occupied his time performing acts of the most base cruelty: chemical injections, brutal amputations, live dissections, castrations without anesthisia, electroshocks, even organ removal. Caine kept notes and audio recordings, but as time went on and his madness increased these became rambling discussions often delving into the philosophical. A few of Caine's assistants would sometimes thieve body parts during the surgery when he wasn't looking to use as dinner ingredients, even going so far as to use corpses as playthings in elaborate funeral parlor parties. He also performed experiments in fear, and wished to see how much the human mind could endure before succumbing to madness and death, which resulted in at least one person being buried alive. The terrible sight was seen by two teenagers who decided to take a walk through the cemetery telling ghost stories. Walking past the gravestones and various monuments they heard music carried on the wind. Following the sound they came across the Shady Oaks Cemetery which is where they witnessed the Caine family dancing with the rotted remains of decaying corpses. Word of the grisly goings-on quickly spread and the police launched a massive investigation, with Chief Brockett giving the order to place all individuals at the crime scene under house arrest. Instead of the desire to resist things, Albert Caine gladly cooperated with the sickened authorities, and even seemed eager to show the results of his "research". Reports of what was found inside during the investigation made headlines that shocked and mortified the nation, a house of horrors the likes of which were not seen since the discovery of Wisconsin killer Ed Gein decades earlier, and a potential body count to rival a Nazi death camp. The local townspeople, mostly comprised of the relatives of the deceased used in the Caretaker's experiments took matters into their own hands, forming a mob and setting fire to the Victorian mansion and the whole area with the Caines still trapped inside. Investigating the remains, detectives were unable to find the body of Dr. Caine nor his demented family supposedly except for the body of Cindy. However, they did find an elaborate network of tunnels running for miles under the graveyard that started in the cellar, which allowed the vandals to retrieve bodies from below. Amongst the ghoulish evidence was a "kitchen filled with body parts", "...a large kettle on the stove that contained boiled body parts...", "...a corridor filled with intestines, an eyeball on the stove, boiling brains...", "...a collection of skulls...", and audio recordings, some of which were Dr. Caine's notes, others from his live surgeries, and some that appeared to be an audio diary of sorts. Before the torching of the site, four victims were positively identified and over 2,000 graves were estimated to have been tampered with. One year later, the Shady Oaks Cemetery had been off limits for all visitor's until the charred ruins of the Caine Funeral Home were set to be demolished, until the discovery of three unidentified decomposing bodies on the premises. Not long after, people who were last reported in the vicinity of the site began to go missing. Several research teams were sent to the reopened cemetery to investigate reports of strange noises emanating from the ruin and the Shady Oaks Cemetery, which may be connected to the terrible secrets of its horrifying past. With three teams already gone missing, the question is: Could Albert Caine and the rest of his family escaped that fire? While Dr. Albert Caine may have been passionate about saving lives, by the end nothing could be further from the truth. From the slipshod way he conducted his experiments, it was clear that Dr. Caine himself had little belief that he was doing serious work. The Caretaker ran little more than a butcher shop; the major surgery without anesthesia was proof of that. His diaries showed that he was a doctor who had gone mad with the power he had over the dead, then his living patients. In his vanity, he fancied himself as a pioneer in his self-styled field of research, and in spite of the horrors in the back rooms, took a measure of pride in keeping up the appearances of a professional funeral director. Physical appearance The Caretaker is a really tall and dark man with a large black top hat, black tuxedo suit, a skull-like face, and long dark-gray hair. Twisited personality Despite his tall, dark, and gruesome appearance, the Caretaker actually turns out to be a calm, well-spoken, and sort-of charismatic character. Dr. Caine is a huge mastermind in a twisted manner, which explains why he performs surgeries the brutal and grotesque way. Appearances at Halloween Horror Nights The Caretaker has first appeared in 2002 as the icon for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear at Universal's Islands of Adventure, after Cindy was dropped. Like most of the other Halloween Horror Nights icons, the Caretaker received his own haunted house known as ScreamHouse. Outside of being the icon, he appeared in ScreamHouse: Revisited at Halloween Horror Nights 13 which was the sequel to ScreamHouse. In Halloween Horror Nights XIV, he appeared in the haunted house Horror Nights Nightmares, along with Jack, his brother Eddie, and the Director, and at Rat Run from Halloween Horror Nights: Tales of Terror chasing people along with the Director and the Storyteller, while Jack the Clown insults the guests to promote something that will happen next year. Speaking of that "next year", the Caretaker and the others appeared altogether for Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16 in 2006. In 2010's Halloween Horror Nights: Twenty Years of Fear, he is revealed to be one of Fear's five minions, known by the alias, Death. During Halloween Horror Nights 23 in 2013, he and fellow icon Jack the Clown sported cameo appearances in The Cabin in the Woods haunted house, based off the film of the same name. Quotes Gallery Caretaker.png|The Caretaker's maniacal grin. 12caretaker.jpg|Closeup hhn2006-caretaker.jpg Caretaker3.jpg|The Caretaker in his laboratory. Caretaker4.jpg Caretaker5.jpg Caretaker face.jpg|Another closeup of the Caretaker's face. Caretaker portrait.jpg|Another portrait of the Caretaker. Trivia *Cindy, the scrapped icon for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear, is the Caretaker's daughter. *The Caretaker bears resemblance to Reverend Amos Howell from Superman: The Animated Series, and also slightly resembles Jack Skellington, the main character of The Nightmare Before Christmas, for their tall, dark, and gruesome appearances. *The Caretaker appears in the intro of Universal Studios Horror Nights: The Art of Scare, which has aired on the Travel Channel and also revealed the name of the Caretaker's actor. *On the Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood advertisements from 2006 starring the Director, the Caretaker has faceless cameos, along with his weapons and laboratory. This could possibly mean that the Director either may have stolen the Caretaker's weapons, is related to him, or he may have lived in the same lab the Caretaker has. 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